of child soldiers and broken men
by Madame Rhea Di'Ey
Summary: At the beginning of their partnership, Itachi falls ill for the first time while they are away on a mission in the Land of Water, and a petrified Kisame has to deal with parental feelings while caring for his much younger partner. He does it surprisingly well; "Heh. Who knew I can be dad material?" [Adorkable, here-and-there angsty one-shot for lectorel.]


**Author's Note: **So I saw a post in the Kisame tag on tumblr where someone wanted this kind of thing: a fanfiction where Kisame has to go full parent on Itachi. And I immediately thought to myself, _Oh, baby, we're so doing this. _Therefor, days and 4350 words later (that's the approximate raw word count), I've done it. This is dedicated to both **_lectorel _**whose post prompted me to write this, and to Bane who literally just stayed with me till five am so I have someone to talk to while I finish this (I can't write if I don't chit-chat with someone as I do it). He always does that and that's fucking neat, man. Shoutout to you bby.

* * *

**Of Child Soldiers and Broken Men**  
_Soldier boy, made of clay – but he served us well.  
–_ Metallica, _"**Disposable Heroes**"_

* * *

When Kisame first found out that he'd been assigned a _thirteen year old kid _as a partner, he'd nearly thrown a fit. Pain had listened quietly, those dead eyes calmly staring at him until he was done ranting; lady Konan had shifted next to the leader, clearly not comfortable with the situation herself.

(They'd all been child soldiers, once. The world was a cruel place like that, and Kisame wasn't sure he was heartless enough to watch another child kill.)

"Itachi Uchiha will be your partner, Kisame, and that's the end of this discussion," Pain had said, and that was that. Kisame was introduced to the kid and the kid was introduced to Kisame – a mousey thing that barely came up to his waist, with big black eyes that held a well-hidden sadness to them; he'd never been an expert at reading people, not really, but he recognized sorrow when he saw it.

His first impression?

Kisame felt like punching something.  
(Or someone; Pain, specifically.)

They greeted each other with hostility, and the boy's eyes swirled red, something hidden behind their whirlpools in a language that he didn't know how to read in quite yet. A week later, they were assigned their first mission as a team; Itachi made his first kill for the Akatsuki, and Kisame had the strength of character to not vomit right then and there.

_Children shouldn't be murderers, damn it._

Missions came and went, blood was spilled, and he began to respect and even admire the kid's courage and skill; but then the boy catches a bad cold that shakes him down to the bones while they are out in the Land of Water, and Kisame feels the earth run out from under his feet – because _Kami_, there is an almost-fourteen-year-old pale as a corpse and barely breathing curled up in stained motel sheets across from him and he has absolutely no idea what the _fuck _he is supposed to do to help the kid survive.

As everything in his life, his salvation comes in the unlikely form of a prying, nagging old lady named Yuki.  
(No, not everything in his life came in the unlikely form of prying, nagging old ladies named Yuki. Things in his life did tend to have unlikely forms, however.)

The short matron pokes her head in to ask if they'd like their dinner served then – because none of her staff members have the balls to go anywhere near Kisame –, and stops short when she sees the despair on Kisame's face. Frowning, she turns to look at what he's staring, and blanches when she sees Itachi.

He's shaking so hard the bed is rattling slightly beneath his weight.

"Good gods," Yuki says, so soft he almost doesn't catch it. "That child's half-dead."

"I don't know what to do," Kisame whispers in reply, so frail and unlike himself that he brisks at the sound. He swallows thickly and clears his throat, feeling the old woman's eyes burning holes into him. "I don't have experience with children," he adds, a little bit rougher but just as quiet.

Yuki moves from the door frame with the grace of a panther, stepping close to the bed and bending over the boy. Gently, she brushes his bangs away from his wet forehead and checks his temperature. Kisame watches her like a hawk. "Lift the boy," she says simply after a moment of pause, briefly running her hand over the top of Itachi's head in a motherly gesture. "And follow me."

Normally, he isn't the sort of person who lets strangers boss him around.

But there's something about this woman that makes steel crawl inside his spine in anticipation; she isn't ordinary – she's too sure of herself to be ordinary. So, he does as she instructs, and cautiously approaches the bed, gathering his younger partner up into his arms with ease, and the only thing he can think is how small Itachi looks, curled up in a bundle against his broad chest.

(Kisame feels a sudden surge of paternal affection and subsequently the urge to scratch an invisible, nonexistent itch.)

She leads them down of the same flight of stairs they climbed when they first got the keys to their room, around a corner and down a hall that gives into a rather large kitchen. With a hand wave, she shoos everyone out and points to a stool by one of the counters. Obediently, he sits down as she indicated, carefully laying Itachi across his lap, both arms wrapped securely around him.

Yuki slides a ceramic bottle towards him with a flick of her wrist. "Give him that. It should make the fever and the shaking subside enough to make him able to keep awake and eat," she says with a nod. Kisame blinks owlishly and uncorks the vial; he sniffs it lightly, and his nose is instantly hit by the powerful aroma of concentrated herbal extracts. It smells prevalently of mint, with undertones he doesn't have knowledge of.

It seems safe enough.

He lifts Itachi higher so that his head rests on his bicep and pushes the boy's lips apart as gently as he can, prying his jaw open with his thumb. "Hey, Ita-chan," he whispers softly, and wide charcoal eyes loll open halfway at the pet name. Kisame smiles crookedly. "Drink up, kid," he says, and puts the vial to his mouth. The boy complies, eyes snapping shut, nose scrunched up like a rabbit's.

_Adorable, _the sharkman can't help but think.

Itachi coughs weakly, snuggling deeper into his chest. "Mother," he mumbles, voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt. "I miss'd you, mother..."

"He's hallucinating from the fever," the old woman supplies, fastening on an apron. Strangely, there had been no sound as she'd grabbed pots and slammed cupboards shut. "First time he's in Mizu?" she asks conversationally, fast hands peeling the skin of earth-brown potatoes and then chopping them up into a bowl. Water with ready-cut chunks of meat floating in it is already boiling low on the stove fixed in the center of the counter, and Kisame almost forgets to answer caught in the sudden avalanche of sensations as he is.

_Probably,_ he thinks; "Yes, the first," he says instead, all their rehearsed backstory flooding in like sunlight in the morning. "I couldn't leave him behind, but I had to come here on a business trip."

He isn't lying – not really; they did come here for business, after all.

The old woman smiles wryly from her high chair. "It's just a cold, although a pretty bad one; it'll be gone in seven days, but he'll still have a weakness in the knees for at least one week after. You shouldn't travel until then," she advises softly, eyes sliding to the side to look at the subject of their conversation. Something in their blue depths softens, before they swirl and he can't read her anymore. He doesn't like how good she is at that, but then again, he has no right to comment. He lives on lies. "I'll help you care for him. You don't need to pay extra for it, either."

"Thank you for your help," Kisame says, making an effort to refrain from cocking an eyebrow. Still, he feels immensely relieved – he has absolutely no idea how to care for children, much less sick young ones.

She waves him off with the same ease water flows in a river. "Don't thank me," she says, and leaves it at that.

Something in her demeanor reminds him terribly of a woman he used to know – _Haya Satō._

(maybe it's the gold of her eyes, maybe the deftness she has with a knife, or maybe the way she holds herself. then again, maybe it's just his imagination.)

Haya had been the unwilling supervisor of his generation as experiments, slapping sense where was needed and otherwise sneaking them candy when nobody was looking. She had been the closest thing he ever had to a mother figure of sorts, and he'd loved her fiercely. She was exceptionally skilled in medical jutsu, something rather unusual for a Kiri nin – who were rather mediocre in that field at the time –, and equally good at fuinjutsu, kenjutsu, and taijutsu. He'd had to fight her once with no weapons, and she handed his ass to him in thirteen kicks.

She was an all-around accomplished nin, but the Mizukage had seen one big flaw in her: she had a heart.

(and a bloodline, but that's just a detail. Yagura was a dirty son of a gun, and making kekkei genkai users into human weapons was one of his favorite past time activities – all "in the best interests of Kirigakure". discovering he had been a puppet all along had been disappointing, since he couldn't hate the bastard half as much anymore.)

Years later, he can still see her chalk white corpse in the middle of a blood pool, those stunning eyes lifelessly aimed at the high stone ceiling, a katana buried deep in her stomach.

Itachi whimpers weakly in the crook of his arm, and Kisame comes back from the high with a startle. He runs his hand absently over the boy's back, trying to offer some sort of awkward comfort. Yuki smiles thinly. "I'll have someone change the sheets in your room and bring heavier blankets and comforters up. The kid needs to sweat the cold and fever out of his system."

He nods limply in response, finding words unnecessary.

The soup boils with a quiet hum, and the old woman sings along to it the tune of an ancient lullaby. Outside lightning and thunder whip cracks across the sky, breaking the dam that holds back a raging storm; a pelt of rain falls on the tiled roofs of the buildings and on the windows and thick walls that are stretching down beneath them, rolling with a thud like that of sticks against a drum.

The islands are falling prey to a flood, and Kisame's worry grows with every inch of land the water is conquering.

Weather this bad is always grim news when you have to care for a sick teammate, be it a child, someone in their pitch prime, or in their old age. Diseases always soar more dangerously where extreme meteorological conditions are involved, especially if they appear this unexpectedly and if your body is not adjusted to a certain climate.

_I need to report back a delay, _he thinks, dread woven in thin stripes around the tightness in his guts. He really doesn't like to write reports; although Konan is always the one that monitors them, imagining Pain's vacant reaction at news of any kind alone is enough to make him go find some cockroaches to squish until the tinge in his nerves goes away.

Data, reports, and intel make him twitchy, ever since a _certain incident._  
(he hides it well enough, though.)

Yuki turns off the stove with a click and the twist of a button and pours three bowls of fresh, hot soup. "Let it cool off a little," she says, "and then give the boy as much as he can eat. I'm going to go upstairs with a maid to rearrange your room, and then I'll come back here."

"Alright," he says back in a whisper. "Take your time, obaa-san."

The lady huffs. "Call me Yuki, kid, or so help me, you'll have no more manhood by morning," she says through her teeth, jumping down from the stool and stomping toward the door, somehow all in the same dead silence she manages to do everything in. Kisame smiles crookedly, and shakes his head lightly once she is at a safe distance away.

_For someone named "snow", she sure is a firestarter._

Her scent is something spicy he cannot quite name, and it takes him back to the past all the same. There's something about her that he can't place, and he doesn't have the time or energy to ponder on it.

Instead, he untangles his left arm from where it was wrapped around Itachi, and gives the boy a light shake. He startles and stiffens in response, and big black eyes swirl red for a moment before the boy realizes he is in no danger. "Easy there, tiger," Kisame says, and hopes his voice is pacifying enough. He takes one of the bowls with his free hand and blows on it, icing his breath so it will cool down to an acceptable temperature faster.

(the argile burns the battered skin of his palm, and it feels almost good.)

When it's palatable, he hefts Itachi on the counter, ignoring his whimper of surprise. The boy stares at him with unusually expressive eyes, and he has to stifle the urge to grin; of course, he fails miserably. "You're trembling too hard to feed yourself, kid, so Imma do it," he answers the unspoken question with a shrug. "C'mon, open up. You need the nourishing."

Unsurprisingly, Itachi blushes cherry red up to the tips of his ears, and then accepts his fate without complaint.

Kisame feeds him carefully, the whole affair feeling surprisingly normal. _Heh. Who knew I can be dad material? _he thinks, more than a little amused. Having children is not something he considers often, if at all, since he knew from the beginning it's something he can't have – he's about as sterile as the medical instruments that made him that way, and even if he could, by absurd, find a way to become fertile, what woman would even consider carrying and giving birth to his child?

He is many things, but he respects women and himself too much to ever stoop so low as to become a rapist; and besides, it's best for someone in his line of work to stay away from liabilities. Children are wonderful things, but they are also weak spots, and he doesn't think he could bear seeing his own offspring in pain, or worse. His paternal instincts, though – those seem to be there. There's no other viable explanation to the varying palette of emotions he's been experiencing since Itachi was assigned to him, and today is a more than perfect proof of their existence.

Itachi eats slowly, chewing sluggishly, almost as if he's forgotten how to do it properly. There's no rush, though, so Kisame doesn't mind – rather, what he feels is concern for the boy's condition.

(he really isn't used to sick people. in Kiri, being sick meant being dead – diseases were "_unacceptable and needed to be purged_", Yagura said, knife-sharp, loony smile in place.)

The bowl is almost done by the time Yuki returns to the kitchen with steps so light they feel rather than hear her enter; she takes a good, long look at them, and a smile cracks across her lips. "Your room was cleaned," she says, "so you can go rest when you're done eating."

"Then we'll go upstairs once the boy has finished his meal," Kisame replies with a nod.

The old lady frowns. "_You_ means _both _of you," she says, a little more forcefully than he considers necessary.

"I'm not hungry, Yuki-san –" he replies, trying to reason, but the woman cuts him off with the brusqueness he's come to associate her with over such a short span of time.

_We're definitely returning to this inn every time we're sent to Mizu._

"Bullshit. You're gonna eat, or I'm gonna shove it down your throat," she says, and plops down on her stool, dragging her bowl closer. He doesn't put it past her, actually, so when the boy is done with his portion he gulps down his own meal without a second thought. Yuki passes him a napkin and nods approvingly, inclining then her head toward the door. "I'll bring you another vial of medicine when it's time for him to take it," she says, a clear dismissal in her tone. "There's plenty of time to sleep until then, though, so make sure you _both _catch some shut-eye, boy."

Kisame laughs. "Yes ma'am," he says, and mock-salutes as he raises from his chair. He whisks Itachi up before the boy has a chance to protest, and gently carries him to their shared room.

Indeed, the room had been fixed up – it is warmer inside somehow, and the bed sheets are now a pure, clean white, a navy comforter stretched atop them. He lays the boy in his arms down under the bedspread, and inspects the two thick brown blankets that sit neatly folded on the night table.

He unrolls them; and by gods, they are not only thick, they are _so_ fluffy.

_I could drown in the softness_, he thinks, and throws both pieces of fabric on the bed. Itachi grunts, unhappy at how one fell on his face, and sputters as he takes it down only to fist it below his chin in a bump. The boy nestles near the middle of the bed, leaving enough space for Kisame to fit in properly, and looking still too small for the blue man's liking, skin too translucent and extremely rosy high in the cheeks.

Kisame kicks off his shoes and turns off the lights before climbing in next to his partner.

As soon as his back hits the bed, he feels a distinct softness that wasn't there when they'd left the room; it seems that Yuki had switched the mattress, too. He hums low in his throat, not at all displeased with the changes. "Hey, 'same-san?" Itachi whispers, weaseling closer to him.

"Yeah?" he says, wrapping an arm around the boy and pulling him flush against his side. The boy sets his head on his broad chest, wiggling around until he finds a comfortable position to settle in.

He'd stopped shaking almost completely; the old lady's medicine had worked wonders.

"Thank you for taking care of me. You didn't...really didn't have to."

He snorts. "Of course I had to. You're my partner – not only would lady Konan have my head if something were to happen to you, but I probably couldn't live with myself," he says, rubbing lazy circles into Itachi's back. "I happen to care, y'know. Shockingly, yes, and surprisingly much."

Itachi smiles, and he can feel it even through the fabric of his shirt. "You're a good man, 'same-san..." he whispers, drifting off into slumber. Kisame chuckles lightly, careful to not disturb him.

"I've been called many things, kid, but a good man was never one of them," he says to the empty air, something sad lurking somewhere deep in his quiet tone.

A soft snore is all he gets in response, and that's something he can deal with.

He stares at the ceiling, and thinks of everything and nothing at all, jumbled thoughts dancing around in his head with steps quicker than anything he'd ever seen moving. Minutes pass and steadily melt into hours, and his eyes slip gradually closed as time stretches on along the hum of the song his thoughts are singing. When the sun rises ever higher in the sky beyond the horizon line, barely seen as it sits hidden behind heavy rainclouds, it finds Kisame peacefully asleep, Itachi curled up into the warmth of his side in a bundle.

The clock hanging lopsidedly above the bed says it's roughly eight in the morning when Yuki tiptoes into the room, a platter with breakfast and another ceramic vial of medicine on it in her hands. She makes her way to the bed and sets the tray on the night table before bending down to shake the two slumbering men into consciousness.

"Rise and shine, boys," she says quietly, laughing when Itachi promptly buries his face deeper in the sheets in response. "It's time to wake up and smell the wind," she adds, shaking them harder. "Come on, wake up, you lazy butts." Her words are met with a mutual groan that only makes her laugh harder. "I'm serious," she says after sobering up a little. "You need to take your medicine and you both need to eat. You can sleep more afterward, it ain't none of my business."

Kisame pops one eye open and grumbles something under his breath. "Alright," he slurs, and clears his throat. "You heard the lady, 'tachi."

The boy sighs, but does sit up. Yuki hands him the bottle of herbal medicament with a kind smile. "I'm going to take a wild guess and say you boys will spend the day in, considering the major storm that's raging outside the safety of the building and your condition," she says after he accepts it with a grateful nod, "So I'll be back around two with lunch and the next dose of medicine."

"Thank you, Yuki-san," Kisame says, handing Itachi one of the glasses of water that rest on the tray.

"Come find me if you need anything in the meantime. I'll be downstairs, either at the reception in the lobby or by the kitchens. Ask a maid, if you're confused and they are brave enough to not faint when you take a step toward them," the old lady says, huffing at the last part. The blue man snorts, and she shakes her head. "I need braver girls, I know, but you can't have it all, can you?"

"No, I suppose you can't," he answers with a shake of his head, watching her as she leaves the room.

Itachi observes the exchange with curious, large black eyes; the illness had made him softer, somehow, more the child he is and less the cold killer he'd been molded into. "You've gotten very friendly with the innkeeper, Kisame-san," he says over the rim of the half empty glass he's holding.

"She reminds me of someone I used to care about," Kisame replies with a shrug, Haya's lifeless corpse flashing before his eyes yet again. He stabs at his breakfast quickly, shoving down the memory by focusing on the food instead. Itachi hums, and the subject is forgotten as they both turn to a more interesting, necessary activity: eating.

Yuki's cooking is absolutely delicious, and it's a welcomed change from all the canned things he's used to eating; the only times he ever gets to eat home cooked meals is when he's in the Akatsuki tower for more than two days in a row and Konan takes time out of her schedule to prepare meals, or when he cooks them himself – and while Konan is a goddess in the kitchen, he counts it a success when he manages to not accidentally light something on fire.

_I'll have to find a way to ask lady Konan to teach me how to prepare a decent meal, some__day__. __It can't hurt to have the ability to prepare something warm._

When they are done stuffing themselves, Itachi promptly lays back down in the nest he'd built overnight amidst the sheets. Kisame cracks a grin at the sight, and crawls out of bed. He opens the drawer of the closet that was put at their disposal, unlocking first the seals he'd placed on it, and pulls out one of the smaller scrolls he'd stored inside. He unseals the parchment as well before sitting down and unrolling it, reaching then for one of the brushes spilled haphazardly on the wood bottom of the drawer.

He cuts his thumb with a swipe across a sharp canine, and dips the soft brush in the blood that spills out of the fresh wound.

_Mission was completed with 100% success, _he writes on the paper, harsh red strokes building up the characters. _However, w__e will return later than expected. The rain season has started earlier than anticipated; as a consequence, we will be stuck on the border of the greater isle for two to five, perhaps six weeks. No ship will take us across the sea and to the continent while the weather is this catastrophic. The risk is far too great to take. I will send the recovered data via summons soon – please tell me how often I should report, if at all. I apologize for the inconvenience._

"This should do," he says aloud, albeit under his breath. He momentarily toys with the idea of adding _'I don't control the goddamn weather', _but decides that it would be an idiotic thing to do, so he simply signs his name beneath the paragraph and runs his hands through the seals necessary for ensuring the delivery of the message. Once done, he reseals the scroll and puts the roll of parchment and the brush neatly away in the drawer before resealing the storage space as well.

With a huge yawn escaping him, Kisame climbs back into bed, and Itachi weasels back into his side. "We're gonna have a mini-vacation," he announces, eyes slipping closed.

"Too bad it's going to rain too much to actually do anything," the boy replies, sounding borderline disappointed.

He laughs. "Vacations where you don't do anything are the best kind of vacations," he responds, almost playful. "What's too bad is that you're sick, Ita-chan."

"Don't call me that," the boy says with a frown. "And I will recover soon."

"Yes, you are," Kisame says with a grin. "And then I'm going to teach you how to have fun by doing essentially nothing, _Ita-chan. _Before that, though, we're gonna sleep your sickness off together, because I could really use the hibernation. Gods know I'm normally lucky if I get to sleep more than ten hours a week."

Itachi sighs, but it's an empty thing. "You're incorrigible," he mutters, shifting around to find a comfortable position to sleep in. "I hope you know that."

"I do," he answers, eyes still closed, tightening his arm around the boy. "And I'm not sorry."

"Obviously," comes the halfhearted reply, and it's the last thing he hears before he drifts off, overtaken suddenly by all the tiredness his considerable stamina had been pushing back for a long while that was now breaking the dam holding it away; the immense stress and helplessness he felt when Itachi fell sick under his eyes had combed with the weather and made a projectile potent enough to send him into a coma-heavy kind of sleep.

_Kami bless this awful storm..._


End file.
